Does chess have beatiful female players????

So here's an event from 2004 that I'm sure we've all heard of.  It features just what you're looking for.  Chess playing babes in bikinis.  It's amazing that this idea didn't just take off. 

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1660

Wow...i joined this thread just an hour ago and i found it so fun, so long to read all your posts with my poor english.

Anyway i think that "glamouros female players" will not affect the popularity of the game...who love chess will continue to play it despite beauties at the board, they will continue to play it cause of the beauty of the game itself, it is a great ancient game, played trough centuries by lot of peoples, with alot of tricks and puzzles and...you perfectly know what i'm speaking about...

Would be cool if there would be more female players, just to confrontate with them...and i admit that a pretty player is fascinating, like the women world champion you were speaking about before, but i'm not sure she has grown up the number of players in the world.

And...for sure...none of us started to play cause there was a stunning woman at the board teaching us, we started cause we were fascinated by the game itself, or not? And so will always be.

I'm trying to kill it with logic and common sense.  Call me an idealist.

Your English is very good and your observations make sense.  It's too bad that Frendu does not understand this.  I keep trying to explain to him, in my own way, that he needs to look inward so that he may find the source of this fetish like attachement to his glamour babe chess idea.  So far he's being as dense as a solid piece of meat; thus he is a meathead.

I completely understand his position and his ideas, wrong as they are.  He however has no concept of why his idea is foolish, immature and doomed to failure.  This is the simplicity of his mind on this point.  Believe me I do not think Frendu is actually stupid, far from it.  I think that his attachement to his idea is stupid and his inability to examine THAT is due to some deeper psychological factor.  My OPINION is either that he suffers from sort of sexual guilt which leads him this silly bikini babes for chess idea.  Or that is ego so fragile that he can't accept the idea that his idea might really be a bad one.  Either case he should be looking inside and not be obsessed with what's wrong with me, Polydiatonic.  My thinking is very clear headed on this point.

Polydiatonic thank you for your statement about my English

About Frendu...he is young, he is full of life, and he wants chess to be like ice-skating...you know, pretty women moving gracefully on ice like dancing, with short costumes, poetry in motion. That is what, i suppose, a girl or a teenager girl have dreamnt to be once in the life.

But chess isn't like that. You are sitted on a chair in front of a table. If you go on television the best shoot you can have is a talking head like. No body actions. If you want to be a master you have to study study and study. It doesn't have many appeal seen from outside. And young peoples dreams to be other in their life, they want to be football champions, movie actors or things like that.

So few peoples nowadays want to learn chess. Not cause there aren't supermodels-like players promoting the game.

I wonder whether the "fetish" might have something to do with the fact that most men like to see pretty women. Many women are impressed by seeing attractive women somewhere as well. I don't think that anyone advocated using "glamour girls" who have nothing to do with chess, but some of us thought that attractive women who are good at chess might help to popularize the pass-time. Apparently we walked into a church without knowing it.

Young people ? Your Prime Minister is an old priapist, and ugly at that.

No, not really. I speak for myself when I say I love women probably as much as you do. But chess is the brain game. It's not for show, not for frivolity like the pussy cat dolls. This is almost serious business. Okay, you see a wrestler, footballer or basketballer execute a powerful move, jump in the air and thump his chest--adrenaline! I'm sure an F1 driver could execute a few tire-roasting doughnuts after winning the race, then get up and do a back flick off the top of the monoque tub. Great! Now after a crushing winning combination what kind of manoeuver do you anticipate a super-GM would do? See? Beautiful women, even if they were GMs would probably generate ogling men for the sport at best. They get a hard-on for ten minutes then start drifting off to sleep following the looooooong, slooooooow game.The percentage of masters--even serious players--would probably remain the same number it's been for centuries. Let young people watch less TV, spend less time loling on the net, be exposed to adults playing the game to excite their natural curiousity and then let's take it from there. If so many people enthusiastically followed the sport I think it'd do better for sponsorship. Hey, was it hot babes that made the English Premier League, the NBA or F1 such a success?

I edited the comments to keep it on point for this post...I think the solution to Frendu's little problem might be to do what so many male dominated sports of done, which of course KEEPS them more male dominated in terms of viewership.  The anwser is simply this:

CHEER LEADERS

I can see it now:  "2 - 4- 6- 8, who do we appreciate scotch gambit, scotch gambit WHOOOOOO SCOTCH GAMBIT.  Give me a pawn, give me a pawn...NO make it
TWO pawns  GORING GAMBIT. GGG GGG GGG what does that mean??  GORING GAMBIT  YEEEEEHAAAA.   

It seems you were right all along frendu, you just had the wrong people in mind.  Don't worry about the players being sexy. Just bring in those cheerleaders!

I think that I might be seeing here a possibly sexist idea that attractive women belong in one place, and intelligent men in another. There is no good reason that such a simplistic division should persist. Attractive women can be good at chess, and unattractive men can be bad at it. Also, there is a difference between chess and physical sports. I think that Kornikova and other attractive girls helped popularize tennis, at least women's tennis, although women's tennis is not objectively on the same level as men's tennis for physical reasons. 

I understand that the OP of this thread might not have great English etc. and given to using caps, but the inquisition he faced seems over the top. Honestly I don't think that he meant anything wrong. If you wouldn't want to see more women playing chess, some of them possibly attractive, then you probably belong to a monastery.

This is a really funny one. Now Danailo Silva could think about that.

That's a painting, not a photo, after all.

I disagree. The game needs the brains. Trying to artificially introduce so-called attractive women is my problem with Frendu's argument. And if the Williams sisters, J. Henin-Hardenne or Kim Clijsters are the most attractive women in tennis then you're right; but Kournikova rode her own wave to her own popularity, not that of tennis. Where is she now? The ladies that made women's tennis more popular are still there doing their thing. My problem with the whole debate is using this 'sex sells' concept to promote such an already beautiful game. What of the already attractive ones in chess right now? What has been done with them so far outside of talk, talk, talk? It has nothing to do with gender. Let those who would play the game play it; let sponsors come into the game but please let's be spared the line about hot chicks making chess more appealing. By the way who has the answer to my EPL, NBA and F1 question? Or is chess more female than those ones? No inquisition, just debate.

Well, I don't think that women (on average) can do as well as men at tennis or basketball for physical reasons. Most men who are under 2 meter height have very little chance of reaching top levels in basketball for that matter. It's not the same at chess, I think, or at least it hasn't been proven.

"Artificially" is a fluffy term. You may have received some "artificial" support as a woman yourself, arguably I think. Again, nobody is arguing for bringing in "glamour girls" like that Ukranian girl what's her name who have little or nothing to do with chess, but I think supporting women who are tallented for / interested in chess would be a good idea. Okay, it would be wrong to select them for attractiveness, but if some of them happen to be also attractive that would be a good thing, IMO.

It would be great to have attractive women in chess just like I'd love to see them in a lot of things but that should be incidental, not a contrived policy to make the game more 'attractive'. That's what I'm saying. Any such move (pun intended) will fall flat on it's face (like a resigned king), in my opinion.

I don't know about that. Maybe they should make a law stating that unattractive women shouldn't be allowed to play chess. LOL. 

Oh Natalia, I absolutely KNEW that this thread couldn't have completely escaped your attention.  I knew it!  So, care to comment on this silly notion that we need "glamour girls" to upsell chess to the masses?  Or perhaps you'd like to comment on the Frendu's other supposition that chess is in horrific shape and needs something like this to survive? 

Btw, giving credit where credit is due, it was actualy Silman who gave me the idea of introducing cheerleaders to chess:

Rah Rah, give me a Q , and that's for queen and you know what I mean cuz Natalia's a wrecking machine.  RAH RAH.

I think paula abdul might be available for choreography.  :)

I'd just settle for some vowels at this point.